found, though this one was his niece. Like all her kind, madame, she had
a lover to her scandal. The Sieur de Roberval whipped her, and prayed
over her, and shut her up in irons in the hold; yet live a godly life
she would not. So what could he do but set her ashore on the Island of
Demons?"
"I do not want to hear it," was Marguerite's muttered protest.
But Le Rossignol advanced closer to her face.
"And what does the lover do but jump overboard and swim after her? And
well was he repaid." Bang! went the mandolin. "So they went up the rocky
island together, and there they built a hut. What a horrible land was
that!
"All day long fiends twisted themselves in mist. The waves made a sadder
moaning there than anywhere else on earth. Monsters crept out of the sea
and grinned with dull eyes and clammy lips. No fruit, no flower,
scarcely a blade of grass dared thrust itself toward the sky on that
scaly island. Daylight was half dusk there forever. But the nights, the
nights, madame, were full of howls, of contending beasts--the nights
were storms of demons let loose to beat on that island!
"All the two people had to eat were the stores set ashore by the Sieur
de Roberval. Now a child was born in their hut, and the very next night
a bear knocked at the door and demanded the child. Marguerite full
freely gave it to him."
The girl shrunk back, and Le Rossignol was delighted until she herself
noticed that Klussman had come in from some duty outside the gates. His
eye detected her employment, and he sauntered not far off with his
shoulder turned to the powder-house.
"Next night, madame," continued Le Rossignol, and her tone and the
accent of the mandolin made an insult of that unsuitable title, "a
horned lion and two dragons knocked at the door and asked for the lover,
and Marguerite full freely gave him to them. Kind soul, she would do
anything to save herself!"
"Go away!" burst out the girl.
"And from that time until a ship took her off, the demons of Demon
Island tried in vain to get Marguerite. They howled around her house
every night, and gaped down her chimney, and whispered through the
cracks and sat on the roof. But thou knowest, madame, that a woman of
her kind, so soft and silent and downward-looking, is more than a match
for any demon; sure to live full easily and to die a fat saint."
"Have done with this," said Klussman behind the dwarf, who turned her
grotesque beak and explained,--
"I am but telling the story of the Island of Demons to Madame Klussman."
As soon as she had spoken the name the Swiss caught her in his hand,
mandolin and all, and walked across the esplanade, holding her at arm's
length, as he might have carried an eel. Le Rossignol ineffectually
squirmed and kicked, raging at the spectacle she made for laughing women
and soldiers. She tried to beat the Swiss with her mandolin, but he
twisted her in another direction, a cat's weight of fury. Giving her no
chance to turn upon him, he opened the entrance and shut her inside the
hall, and stalked back to make his explanation to his wife. Klussman had
avoided any glimpse of Marguerite until this instant of taking up her
defense.
"I pulled that witch-midget off thee," he said, speaking for the
fortress to hear, "because I will not have her raising tumults in the
fort. Her place is in the hall to amuse her ladies."
Marguerite's chin rested on her breast.
"Go in the house," said Klussman roughly. "Why do you show yourself out
here to be mocked at?"
The poor girl raised her swimming eyes and looked at him in the fashion
he remembered when she was ill; when he had nursed her with agonies of
fear that she might die. The old relations between them were thus
suggested in one blinding flash. Klussman turned away so sick that the
walls danced around him. He went outside the fort again, and wandered
around the stony height, turning at every few steps to gaze and strain
his eyes at that new clay in the graveyard.
"When she lies beside that," muttered the soldier, "then I can be soft
to her," though he knew he was already soft to her, and that her look
had driven through him.
XII.
D'AULNAY.
The swelling spring was chilled by cold rain, driving in from the bay
and sweeping through the half budded woods. The tide went up St. John
River with an impulse which flooded undiked lowlands, yet there was no
storm dangerous to shipping. Some sails hung out there in the whirl of
vapors with evident intention of making port.
Marie took a glass up to the turret and stood on the cannon to watch
them. Rain fine as driven stings beat her face, and accumulated upon her
muffling to run down and drip on the wet floor. She could make out
nothing of the vessels. There were three of them, each by its sails a
ship. They could not be the ships of Nicholas Denys carrying La Tour's
recruits. She was not foolish enough, however great her husband's
prosperity with Denys, to expect of him such a miraculous voyage around
Cape Sable.
Sails were a rare sight on that side of the bay. The venturesome seamen
of the Massachusetts colony chose other courses. Fundy Bay was aside
from the great sea paths. Port Royal sent out no ships except
D'Aulnay's, and on La Tour's side of Acadia his was the only vessel.
Certain of nothing except that these unknown comers intended to enter
St. John River, Madame La Tour went downstairs and met Klussman on the
wall. He turned from his outlook and said directly,--
"Madame, I believe it is D'Aulnay."
"You may be right," she answered. "Is any one outside the gates?"
"Two men went early to the garden, but the rain drove them back.
Fortunately, the day being bad, no one is hunting beyond the falls."
"And is our vessel well moored?"
"Her repairing was finished some days ago, you remember, madame, and she
sits safe and comfortable. But D'Aulnay may burn her. When he was here
before, my lord was away with the ship."
"Bar the gates and make everything secure at once," said Marie. "And
salute these vessels presently. If it be D'Aulnay, we sent him back to
his seigniory with fair speed once before, and we are no worse equipped
now."
She returned down the stone steps where Van Corlaer's courtship had
succeeded, and threw off her wet cloak to dry herself before the fire in
her room. She kneeled by the hearth; the log had burned nearly away. Her
mass of hair was twisted back in the plain fashion of the Greeks--that
old sweet fashion created with the nature of woman, to which the world
periodically returns when it has exhausted new devices. The smallest
curves, which were tendrils rather than curls of hair, were blown out of
her fleece over forehead and ears. A dark woman's beauty is independent
of wind and light. When she is buffeted by weather the rich inner color
comes through her skin, and the brightest dayshine can do nothing
against the dusk of her eyes.
If D'Aulnay was about to attack the fort, Marie was glad that Monsieur
Corlaer had taken his bride, the missionaries, and his people and set
out in the opposite direction. Barely had they escaped a siege, for they
were on their way less than twenty-four hours. She had regretted their
first day in a chill rain. But chill rain in boundless woods is better
than sunlight in an invested fortress. Father Jogues' happy face with
its forward droop and musing eyelids came before Marie's vision.
"I need another of his benedictions," she said in undertone, when a
knock on her door and a struggle with its latch disturbed her.
"Enter, Le Rossignol," said Madame La Tour. And Le Rossignol entered,
and approached the hearth, standing at full length scarcely as high as
her lady kneeling. The room was a dim one, for all apartments looking
out of the fort had windows little larger than portholes, set high in
the walls. Two or three screens hid its uses as bedchamber and
dressing-room, and a few pieces of tapestry were hung, making occasional
panels of grotesque figures. A couch stood near the fireplace. The
dwarf's prominent features were gravely fixed, and her bushy hair stood
in a huge auburn halo around them. She wet her lips with that sudden
motion by which a toad may be seen to catch flies.
"Madame Marie, every one is running around below and saying that
D'Aulnay de Charnisay is coming again to attack the fort."
"Your pretty voice has always been a pleasure to me, Nightingale."
"But is it so, madame?"
"There are three ships standing in."
Le Rossignol's russet-colored gown moved nearer to the fire. She
stretched her claws to warm and then lifted one of them near her lady's
nose.
"Madame Marie, if D'Aulnay de Charnisay be coming, put no faith in that
Swiss!"
"In Klussman?"
"Yes, madame."
"Klussman is the best soldier now in the fort," said Madame La Tour
laughing. "If I put no faith in him, whom shall I trust?"
"Madame Marie, you remember that woman you brought back with you?"
"I have not seen her or spoken with her," said Marie self-reproachfully,
"since she vexed me so sorely about her child. She is a poor creature.
But they feed and house her well in the barracks."
"Madame Marie, Klussman hath been talking with that woman every day this
week."
The dwarf's lady looked keenly at her.
"Oh, no. There could be no talk between those two."
"But there hath been. I have watched him. Madame Marie, he took me up
when I went into the fort before Madame Bronck's marriage--when I was
but playing my clavier before that sulky knave to amuse her--he took me
up in his big common-soldier fingers, gripping me around the waist, and
flung me into the hall."
"Did he so?" laughed Marie. "I can well see that my Nightingale can put
no more faith in the Swiss. But hearken to me, thou bird-child. There!
Hear our salute!"
The cannon leaped almost over their heads, and the walls shook with its
boom and rebound. Marie kept her finger up and waited for a reply.
Minute succeeded minute. The drip of accumulated rain-drops from the
door could be heard, but nothing else. Those sullen vessels paid no
attention to the inquiry of Fort St. John.
"Our enemy has come."
She relaxed from her tense listening and with a deep breath looked at Le
Rossignol.
"Do not undermine the faith of one in another in this fortress. We must
all hold together now. The Swiss may have a tenderness for his wretched
wife which thou canst not understand. But he is not therefore faithless
to his lord."
Taking the glass and throwing on her wet cloak, Marie again ran up to
the wall. But Le Rossignol sat down cross-legged by the fire, wise and
brooding.
"If I could see that Swiss hung," she observed, "it would scratch in my
soul a long-felt itch."
When calamity threatens, we turn back to our peaceful days with
astonishment that they ever seemed monotonous. Marie watched the ships,
and thought of the woman days with Antonia before Van Corlaer came; of
embroidery, and teaching the Etchemins, and bringing sweet plunder from
the woods for the child's grave; of paddling on the twilight river when
the tide was up, brimming and bubble-tinted; of her lord's coming home
to the autumn-night hearth; of the little wheels and spinning, and
Edelwald's songs--of all the common joys of that past life. The clumsy
glass lately brought from France to master distances in the New World,
wearied her hands before it assured her eyes.
D'Aulnay de Charnisay was actually coming to attack Fort St. John a
second time. He warily anchored his vessels out of the fort's range; and
hour after hour boats moved back and forth landing men and artillery on
the cape at the mouth of the river, a position which gave as little
scope as possible to St. John's guns. All that afternoon tents and
earthworks were rising, and detail by detail appeared the deliberate and
careful preparations of an enemy who was sitting down to a siege.
At dusk camp-fires began to flame on the distant low cape, and voices
moved along air made sensitively vibrant by falling damp. There was the
suggested hum of a disciplined small army settling itself for the night
and for early action.
Madame La Tour came out to the esplanade of the fort, and the Swiss met
her, carrying a torch which ineffectual rain-drops irritated to constant
hissing. He stood, tall and careworn, holding it up that his lady might
see her soldiers. Everything in the fort was ready for the siege. The
sentinels were about to be doubled, and sheltered by their positions.
"I have had you called together, my men," she spoke, "to say a word to
you before this affair begins."
The torch flared its limited circle of shine, smoke wavering in a
half-seen plume at its tip, and showed their erect figures in line, none
very distinct, but all keenly suggestive of life. Some were
black-bearded and tawny, and others had tints of the sun in flesh and
hair. One was grizzled about the temples, and one was a smooth-cheeked
youth. The roster of their familiar names seemed to her as precious as a
rosary. They watched her, feeling her beauty as keenly as if it were a
pain, and answering every lambent motion of her spirit.
All the buildings were hinted through falling mist, and glowing hearths
in the barracks showed like forge lights; for the wives of the half
dozen married soldiers had come out, one having a child in her arms.
They stood behind their lady, troubled, but reliant on her. She had with
them the prestige of success; she had led the soldiers once before, and
to a successful defense of the fort.
"My men," said Marie, "when the Sieur de la Tour set out to northern
Acadia he dreaded such a move as this on D'Aulnay's part. But I assured
him he need not fear for us."
The soldiers murmured their joy and looked at one another smiling.
"The Sieur de la Tour will soon return, with help or without it. And
D'Aulnay has no means of learning how small our garrison is. Bind
yourselves afresh to me as you bound yourselves before the other
attack."
"My lady, we do!"
Out leaped every right hand, Klussman's with the torch, which lost and
caught its flame again with the sudden sweep.
"That is all: and I thank you," said Marie. "We will do our best."
She turned back to the tower under the torch's escort, her soldiers
giving her a full cheer which might further have deceived D'Aulnay in
the strength of the garrison.
XIII.
THE SECOND DAY.
The exhilaration of fighting quickened every pulse in the fort. By next
dawn the cannon began to speak. D'Aulnay had succeeded in planting
batteries on a height eastward, and his guns had immediate effect. The
barracks were set on fire and put out several times during the day. All
the inmates gathered in the stone hall, and at its fireplace the cook
prepared and distributed rations. Great balls plowed up the esplanade,
and the oven was shattered into a storm of stone and mortar, its
adjoining mill being left with a gap in the side.
Responsive tremors from its own artillery ran through the fortress'
walls. The pieces, except that one in the turret, were all brought into
two bastions, those in the southeast bastion being trained on
D'Aulnay's batteries, and the others on his camp. The gunner in the
turret also dropped shot with effect among the tents, and attempted to
reach the ships. But he was obliged to use nice care, for the iron
pellets heaped on the stone floor behind him represented the heavy labor
of one soldier who tramped at intervals up the turret stair, carrying
ammunition.
The day had dawned rainless but sullen. It was Good Friday. The women
huddling in the hall out of their usual haunts noticed Marguerite's
refusal even of the broth the cook offered her. She was restless, like a
leopard, and seemed full of electrical currents which found no discharge
except in the flicker of her eyes. Leaving the group of settles by the
fireplace where these simple families felt more at home and least
intrusive on the grandeur of the hall, she put herself on a distant
chair with her face turned from them. This gave the women a chance to
backbite her, to note her roused mood, and to accuse her among
themselves of wishing evil to the fort and consequently to their
husbands.
"She hath the closest mouth in Acadia," murmured one. "Doth anybody in
these walls certainly know that she came from D'Aulnay?"
"The Swiss, her husband, told it."
"And if she find means to go back to D'Aulnay, it will appear where she
came from," suggested Zélie.
"I would he had her now," said the first woman. "I have that feeling for
her that I have for a cat with its hairs on end."
Madame La Tour came to the hall and sat briefly and alone at her own
table to take her dinner and supper. Later in the siege she stood and
merely took food from the cook's hands, talking with and comforting her
women while she ate. The surgeon of the fort was away with La Tour. She
laid bandages ready, and felt obliged to dress not only the first but
every wound received.
Pierre Doucett was brought from one of the bastions stunned and
bleeding, and his wife rose up with her baby in her arms, filling the
hall with her cries. The baby and her neighbors' children were moved to
join her. But the eye of her lady was as awful as Pierre's wound. Her
outcry sunk to a whimper; she hushed the children, and swept them off
the settle so Pierre could lie there, and even paid out the roll of
bandage with one hand while her lady used it. Marie controlled her own
faintness; for a woman on whom a man's labors are imposed must bear
them.
The four little children stood with fingers in their mouths, looking at
these grim tokens of war. All day long they heard the crashing or
thumping of balls, and felt the leap and rebound of cannon. The cook,
when he came down from a bastion to attend to his kettles, gave them
nice bits to eat, and in spite of solemnity, they counted it a holiday
to be in the hall. Pierre Doucett groaned upon his settle, and Madame
La Tour being on the lookout in the turret, Pierre Doucett's wife again
took to wailing over him. The other women comforted her with their
ignorant sympathy, and Marguerite sat with her back to it all. But the
children adapted themselves to the situation, and trooped across to the
foot of the stairway to play war. On that grim pavement door which led
down into the keep they shot each other with merry cannonading and were
laid out in turn on the steps.
Le Rossignol passed hours of that day sitting on the broad door-sill of
the tower. She loved to watch the fiery rain; but she was also waiting
for a lull in the cannonading that she might release her swan. He was
always forbidden the rooms in the tower by her lady; for he was a
pugnacious creature, quick to strike with beak or wings any one who
irritated him. Especially did he seem tutored in the dwarf's dislike of
Lady Dorinda. In peaceful times when she descended to the ground and
took a sylvan excursion outside the fort, he ruffled all his feathers
and pursued her even from the river. Le Rossignol had a forked branch
with which she yoked him as soon as D'Aulnay's vessels alarmed the fort.
She also tied him by one leg under his usual shelter, the pent-house of
the mill. He always sulked at restraint, but Le Rossignol maintained
discipline. In the destruction of the oven and the reeling of the mill,
Shubenacadie leaped upward and fell back flattened upon the ground. The
fragments had scarcely settled before his mistress had him in her arms.
At the risk of her life she dragged him across to the entrance, and sat
desolately crumbling away between her fingers such feathers as were
singed upon him, and sleeking his long gasping neck. She swallowed
piteously with suspense, but could not bring herself to examine his
body. He had his feet; he had his wings; and finally he sat up of his
own accord, and quavered some slight remark about the explosion.
"What ails thee?" exclaimed the dwarf indignantly. "Thou great coward!
To lie down and gasp and sicken my heart for the singeing of a few
feathers!"
She boxed the place where a swan's ear should be, and Shubenacadie bit
her. It was a serene and happy moment for both of them. Le Rossignol
opened the door and pushed him in. Shubenacadie stood awkwardly with his
feet sprawled on the hall pavement, and looked at the scenes to which
his mistress introduced him. He noticed Marguerite, and hissed at her.
"Be still, madman," admonished the dwarf. "Thou art an intruder here.
The peasants will drive thee up chimney. Low-born people, when they get
into good quarters, always try to put their betters out."
Shubenacadie waddled on, scarcely recovered from the prostration of his
fright, and inclined to hold the inmates of the tower accountable for
it. Marie had just left Pierre Doucett, and his nurses were so busy with
him that the swan was not detected until he scattered the children from
the stairs.
"Now, Mademoiselle Nightingale," said Zélie, coming heavily across the
flags, "have we not enough strange cattle in this tower, that you must
bring that creature in against my lady's orders?"
"He shall not stand out there under D'Aulnay's guns. Besides, Madame
Marie hath need of him," declared Le Rossignol impudently. "She would
have me ride to D'Aulnay's camp and bring her word how many men have
fallen there to-day."
Zélie shivered through her indignation.
"Do you tell me such a tale, when you were shut in the turret for that
very sin?"
"Sin that is sin in peace is virtue in war," responded Le Rossignol.
"Mount, Shubenacadie."
"My lady will have his neck, wrung," threatened Zélie.
"She dare not. The chimney will tumble in. The fort will be taken."
"Art thou working against us?" demanded the maid wrathfully.
"Why should I work for you? You should, indeed, work for me. Pick me up
this swan and carry him to the top of the stairs."
"I will not do it!" cried Zélie, revolting through every atom of her
ample bulk. "Do I want to be lifted over the turret like thistledown?"
The dwarf laughed, and caught her swan by the back of his neck. With
webbed toes and beating wings he fought every step; but she pulled
herself up by the balustrade and dragged him along. His bristling
plumage scraped the upper floor until he and his wrath were shut within
the dwarf's chamber.
"Naught but muscle and bone and fire and flax went to the making of that
stunted wight," mused Zélie, setting her knuckles in her hips. "What a
pity that she escapes powder and ball, when poor Pierre Doucett is shot
down!--a man with wife and child, and useful to my lady besides."
It was easy for Claude La Tour's widow to fill her idleness with visions
of political alliance, but when D'Aulnay de Charnisay began to batter
the walls round her ears, her common sense resumed sway. She could be of
no use outside her apartment, so she took her meals there, trembling,
but in her fashion resolute and courageous. The crash of cannon-shot was
forever associated with her first reception in Acadia. Therefore this
siege was a torture to her memory as well as a peril to her body. The
tower had no more sheltered place, however, than Lady Dorinda's room.
Zélie had orders to wait upon her with strict attention. The cannonading
dying away as darkness lifted its wall between the opposed forces, she
hoped for such sleep as could be had in a besieged place, and waited
Zélie's knock. War, like a deluge, may drive people who detest each
other into endurable contact; and when, without even a warning stroke on
the panel, Le Rossignol slipped in as nimbly as a spider, Lady Dorinda
felt no such indignation as she would have felt in ordinary times.
"May I sit by your fire, your highness?" sweetly asked the dwarf. Lady
Dorinda held out a finger to indicate the chimney-side and to stay
further progress. The sallow and corpulent woman gazed at the beak-faced
atom.
"It hath been repeated a thousand times, but I will say again I am no
highness."
Le Rossignol took the rebuke as a bird might have taken it, her bright
round eyes reflecting steadily the overblown mortal opposite. She had
never called Lady Dorinda anything except "her highness." The dullest
soldier grinned at the apt sarcastic title. When Marie brought her to
account for this annoyance, she explained that she could not call Lady
Dorinda anything else. Was a poor dwarf to be punished because people
made light of every word she used? Yet this innocent creature took a
pleasure of her own in laying the term like an occasional lash on the
woman who so despised her. Le Rossignol sat with arms around her knees,
on the hearth corner. Lady Dorinda in her cushioned chair chewed
aromatic seeds.